Widow Sues Over Casino Lightning Strike

On September 15, Bryan Bradley and Joe Forcinito were working construction on an outdoor deck of the uncompleted Revel casino, in Atlantic City, N.J. A storm brewed overheard, with lightning flashing in staccato bursts. Forcinito, foreman of the crew pouring concrete, wanted to evacuate, but the buckets of concrete, along with a quick-drying agent added to speed the process along, kept coming up, the AP reports.

The men, along with a third worker, Dennis Lamond, decided to empty one final bucket and find safety, even if they lost their jobs. And then a bolt of lightning cracked through the sky, striking an 800-foot-tall metal crane. Bradley, who was gripping a metal bucket of concrete, was electrocuted and killed. Forcinito and Lamond, who were working a few feet away, were also struck.

Yesterday Forcinito, Lamond and Bradley's widow, Carmen, filed suit against Tishman Construction Corp. of New York and Network Construction Co. of Pleasantville, N.J., a Tishman subcontractor. According to the lawsuit, the companies needlessly endangered the men's lives by keeping them on the job during severe weather.

"When we were young children, we were told by our families, 'Don't go outside with an umbrella when there's lightning,'" Paul D'Amato, Carmen Bradley's lawyer, told the AP, adding that more than 1,000 documented lightning strikes had been in the area shortly before the men were hit.

A Tishman spokesman refused to comment on pending litigation, but told AP that the companies hasn't been found to be at fault by "any entity investigating the incident last year, including OSHA."

But Bradley, of Linwood, N.J., maintains that the companies only wanted the job completed, regardless of the potential threats.

"My husband and his co-workers were made to work under dangerous working conditions with zero regard for their lives," she told AP. "I would like to address those responsible for my husband's death and ask them: If it had been their son or their father up on that roof that day, would they have shut the job down? I believe the outcomes would have been much different."